Yesterday, the Student Activities Board revealed Aaron Carter as the main attraction of this year’s Centralhallapalooza.
Carter hit the peak of his fame in the 2000s, performing with Hilary Duff and the Backstreet Boys and appearing on Disney. Some hit singles of his are “I Want Candy” and “Aaron’s Party (Come and Get It).”
Director of Student Activities Amanda Bigney said SAB wanted to dip into rollover funds to create the biggest and best Centralhallapalooza ever, and that meant getting someone big to come perform.
“It was kind of random. I had a call come in and they said, ‘We work with big names and do live performances. Would you be interested in that?’ and I said, ‘Actually, we’re looking to get somebody for our Centralhallapalooza date in April,’” Bigney said. “So we went through a list of names and I just said, ‘How crazy would it be if we got Aaron Carter?’”
Bigney said SAB wants to “cater to the college crowd” and treat students to fun, catchy music during the last event of the year.
“We were trying to cater to the masses, so people that we knew that most students would know or at least have some connection with — he was a name we figured most people would know,” Bigney said. “It’s upbeat, it’s fun, and it’s totally throwback. Which is kind of what we were hoping for.”
Promotions Chair junior Mallory Sachen said Aaron Carter was the obvious choice when SAB was looking through the list of names to contract an artist.
“None of the options on the list were very big names, but Aaron Carter was the one we all could say, ‘Yes we know Aaron Carter songs,’” Sachen said. “We all grew up with him. He was so much more recognizable than everyone else.”
At noon on April 9 in the Grewcock Student Union, SAB played “Aaron’s Party,” while releasing a large white banner depicting Carter’s face. SAB also passed out cut-outs of Carter’s face for students. But Aaron Carter is not the only new attraction for the end-of-the-year event. SAB plans to bring in a local DJ, Bigney said.
“We’re going to be doing one hour of DJ,” Bigney said. “We’ve gotten a lot of people asking to have more of the intermediate music just to dance to and enjoy. They’re going to be bringing in lights and fog and really creating that concert-like atmosphere, so that will be a lot different from last year.”
Senior Alex Anderson, media chair of SAB, said Aaron Carter will be a particularly fun addition to the night.
“We thought it would be a great way to end the year and the night with an artist I think a lot of people can recognize both name-wise and content-wise,” Anderson said. “It’s kind of exciting to say, ‘Hey, a childhood star came to my college.’”
Because SAB is spending so much money on Centralhallapalooza this year, Bigney said it’s probably going to be the best event of the year.
“It’s probably going to be the biggest Centralhallapalooza that’s ever been on campus, because we’re going big this year,” Bigney said. “We want to make sure everyone really enjoys it.”
